the Open Siddur Project ✍︎ פְּרוֹיֶּקט הַסִּדּוּר הַפָּתוּחַ
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🖖︎ Prayers & Praxes // 📅︎ Prayers for Civic Days on Civil Calendars // United States Civil Calendar // National Brotherhood Week
National Brotherhood Week
![]() ![]() ![]() The pedagogical song “Hashem is Everywhere!” by Rabbi Yosef Goldstein (1928-2013) can be found in the context of his story, “Where is Hashem?,” the second track on his album מדות טובות Jewish Ethics Through Story and Song (Menorah Records 1972). In the instructions to reciting the lyrics, the singer points first to the six cardinal directions and lastly, by pointing inward towards one’s self. In so doing, one explicitly affirms the idea of the divine within ourselves and implicitly, in each other. . . . אַלװעלטלעכע דעקלאַראַציע פֿון מענטשנרעכט | הַכְרָזָה לְכׇל בָּאֵי עוֹלָם בִּדְבַר זְכֻיוֹת הָאָדָם | Deklarasion Universal de Derechos Umanos | Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)![]() ![]() ![]() This prayer by Rabbi Dudley Weinberg, National Chaplain of AMVETS after World War II, was included in the anthology, The Prayer Book of the Armed Forces (ed. Daniel A. Poling, 1951), pp. 79-80. The prayer was chosen for publication by the then National Commander of AMVETS, Harold Russell. . . . Iwo Jima Memorial Address at Fifth Marine Division Cemetery, by Rabbi Chaplain Roland B. Gittelsohn (21 March 1945)![]() ![]() ![]() “Interdependence” by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879-1958) was originally written for the 50th Anniversary of the World’s Young Women’s Christian Association, 19 November 1944. The prayer was included by Rabbi Morrison David Bial in his anthology, An Offering of Prayer (1962), p. 55. It’s likely that Rabbi Bial first read the prayer in an anthology of prayer by Stephen Hole Fritchman, Prayers of the Free Spirit (1945), p. 38. . . . ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() This prayer by Stephen Vincent Benét (1898-1943) was first publicly read in 1942 in the course of a United Nations Day speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. . . . ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() This “Special Prayer” for a Youth Service (11 April 1942) by the Hon. Lily H. Montagu (1873-1963) from the archives of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London, was published in, Lily Montagu: Sermons, Addresses, Letters, and Prayers (ed. Ellen M. Umansky, 1985), p. 351. April 11th that year would have corresponded to the 24th of Nissan, i.e., a day following Passover 5702. . . . Man Is Here for the Sake of Others, by Albert Einstein (1930) as excerpted by Rabbi Morrison David Bial![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() “Man Is Here for the Sake of Others,” a short excerpt from a longer essay by Albert Einstein, was included by Rabbi Morrison David Bial in his collection of supplemental prayers and texts for personal prayer and synagogue services: An Offering of Prayer (Temple Sinai of Summit, New Jersey, 1962). The full text of Einstein’s essay appeared under the title “What I Believe” in Forum and Century 84 (October 1930), no. 4, p. 193-194. David E. Rowe and Robert Schulman (in Einstein on Politics 2007, p. 226) note, “The text was reproduced several times under the title ‘The World as I See It,’ most notably in Mein Weltbild and Ideas and Opinions, and in 1932 the German League of Human Rights released a phonograph recording of Einstein reading a slightly variant version entitled ‘Confession of Belief.'” . . . בּרידער | “Brothers” – Y.L. Peretz’s Sardonic Rejoinder to Friedrich Schiller’s Paean to Universal Enlightenment, An die Freude (Ode to Joy)![]() ![]() ![]() Y.L. Peretz rejected cultural universalism, seeing the world as composed of different nations, each with its own character. Liptzin comments that “Every people is seen by him as a chosen people…”; he saw his role as a Jewish writer to express “Jewish ideals…grounded in Jewish tradition and Jewish history.” This is Peretz lampoon of the popularity of Friedrich Schiller’s idealistic paean made famous as the lyrics to the climax of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. . . . ![]() ![]() ![]() “How beautiful it is to see,” by Penina Moïse, published in 1842, appears under the subject “Brotherly Love” as Hymn 41 in Hymns Written for the Service of the Hebrew Congregation Beth Elohim, South Carolina (Penina Moïse et al., Ḳ.Ḳ. Beth Elohim, 1842), pp. 44-45. . . . An die Freude | שִׁיר לְשִׂמְחָה | ode to Joy (Shir l’Simḥah), a Hebrew adaptation of the hymn by Friedrich Schiller (ca. late 18th c.)![]() ![]() ![]() In 1785 Friedrich Schiller wrote his ‘An die Freude an ode ‘To Joy’, describing his ideal of an equal society united in joy and friendship. Numerous copies and adaptations attest to its popularity at the time. The slightly altered 1803 edition was set to music not only by Ludwig van Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony but also by other composers such as Franz Schubert and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Hs. Ros. PL B-57 contains a Hebrew translation of the first edition of the ode (apparently rendered before the 1803 alteration), revealing that the spirit of the age even managed to reach the Jewish community in the Netherlands. Whereas the imagery of Schiller’s original is drawn from Greek mythology, the author of the שִׁיר לְשִׂמְחָה relies on the Bible as a source. In fact, he not only utilises Biblical imagery, but successfully avoids any allusion to Hellenistic ideas whatsoever. . . . De Rechten van den Menschen van den Burger | דברי הברית החקים והמשפטים אשר בין אדם לאדם | The Rights of Man and of the Citizen, after the Declaration of the Batavian Republic and the Emancipation of Dutch Jewry (1795/1798)![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() This is De Rechten van den Menschen van den Burger (“The Rights of Man and of the Citizen” 1795) and its Hebrew translation, דברי הברית החקים והמשפטים אשר בין אדם לאדם (1798), upon the establishment of the Batavian Republic and the ensuing emancipation of Dutch Jewry in the Netherlands. The text of the Declaration, with nineteen articles, follows after the French Republic’s much expanded Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen de 1793 written by Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles. (The French Declaration, ratified by popular vote in July 1793, was a revision of the initial Declaration from 1789 written by the commission that included Hérault de Séchelles and Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just during the period of the French Revolution.) Declarations such as these enshrined the liberal values of the Enlightenment which changed the situation and status of Jews under their aegis. Ultimately, these values were largely enshrined under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by member states of the nascent United Nations in 1945. . . . די דעקלאראציע פון אומאָפּהענגיקײט | הצהרת העצמאות של ארצות־הברית | The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America (1776), with translations in Yiddish (1892) and Hebrew (1945) |